It seems that Jakartass has stirred up Indonesia's intelligence community with the highlighting of the presumptiveness of the TNI in assuming that SBY wanted the Indonesian miltary to reassume its territorial function.

Top officials gathered yesterday to discuss the issue, but were not yet able to formulate an appropriate task for the military whose role has been reduced to defense affairs since 1999.

Minister of Defense Juwono Sudarsono, who also attended the meeting, said the TNI would assist the police by making use of its "eyes and ears".

Dismissing fears of the reinstatement of New Order style repressive measures, Juwono underlined there would be an intelligence operation to hunt down terrorists.

"Our national defense system requires cooperation between the TNI and the police to fight terrorism nationwide. Indeed, our soldiers have been trained to take preemptive measures, but I must emphasize that in the war on terror the TNI will only supply intelligence information to the police and the police will still take the lead," Juwono said.

In Jakarta a number of building managers have complainedof being forced to make a deal on the payment before the police agreed to send in the bomb squad to sweep the buildings after receiving bomb threats.

Companies now seemingly prefer to conduct their own security sweeps.

The issue surfaced last week after the police made public their displeasure with the management of French hypermarket Carrefour which failed to inform them about a bomb threat and, instead, deployed its internal security guards to sweep the store.

The Criminal Law Procedures Code (KUHAP) stipulates that only the police have the right and expertise to investigate terror threats.

The police said that if there had been an explosion, the hypermarket could have faced criminal charges for negligence resulting in injuries.

Criminologist Adrianus Meliala from the University of Indonesia suggested that the police communicate with building managers and convince them politely that they were not going to disrupt the operations of the building.

"Furthermore, the public should stop giving money to the police so it won't become a habit," he added.

Ah, so the public is partly to blame?

City police spokesman Sr. Comr. I Ketut Untung Yoga Ana said that it was clear that police's internal regulations prohibit officers from asking money for their services."It's bribery and abuse of power at the same time. We never tolerate that. If we ever catch an officer asking money from the public, we will punish him," he told the Jakarta Post.

So now we know that paying for police services is illegal. That's another little earner denied to the boys in khaki (who should be on a higher salary than the meagre Rp.1 million, c.$100 a month, they currently earn).

So who could have been responsible for the bomb hoaxes in the first place?